Archives and Special Collections - Australia and the Pacific

The Archive of Māori and Pacific Music houses the world’s largest ethnographic sound collection relating to the Pacific. Established in 1970 to promote research into the music of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Māori, and those of the people of the Pacific Islands, its holdings today include material from most tribal groups of New Zealand and most Pacific Islands areas, commercial and field recordings of vocal and instrumental music, oral histories, stories and language resources

There are over 45,000 hours of sound recordings held in the AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive. Most of the collection is made up of unique and unpublished field recordings documenting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, ceremonies, music, oral history, cultural narratives, site descriptions, research seminars, and important events.

The oldest recording in the collection dates from 1898. It is a copy of a wax cylinder recording made by Alfred Haddon and Baldwin Spencer during the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait. The original cylinders are held in the British Library. The oldest original material at AIATSIS was collected by linguist Arthur Capell and associates in 1949 in the Northern Territory.

Bishop Museum’s Audio Collection consists of thousands of oral history interviews, recorded programs and lectures, Hawaiian oli and mele (chant and song) and the music and languages of other Pacific islands. These recordings were gathered over a sixty-year period beginning in the early 1920s, recorded on diverse technologies including cylinders, discs, steel wire, and magnetic tape, and form one of the finest collections of this kind in the world.

The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) is a government-funded cultural research institution established in 1974, under the National Cultural Council. The IPNGS Music Department documents, preserves, and disseminates research on the music and dance traditions of PNG, holding over 10,000 hours of recordings (tapes, cassettes, records, videotapes, and compact discs).

The recordings reflect IPNGS own work, as well as that of overseas researchers. Additionally, historical recordings of PNG music going back to 1898 have been repatriated from archives in Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Australia, and the United States. Complimenting the archive is a large collection of printed materials about music and dance in the country.

Includes digitized newsletters from the 1970s (Mantle Hood was an editor for several years), a searchable database of 38,800 recordings from the earliest days of recorded Hawaiian music until 1999, and a number of digitized Hawaiian songbooks.

The National Archives of Fiji hold more than 15,000 hours of film and video footage, plus thousands of photos. Includes footage of World War II, the Solomon Campaign, the Malayan campaign, indenture days, Independence Day, royal family visits, Commonwealth heads meeting and the first legislative sitting at the old parliament complex.

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia is the nation’s living archive, collecting, preserving and sharing Australia's rich audiovisual heritage. The national audiovisual collection holds more than 1.6 million works.

The Archive of New Zealand Music contains unpublished music scores and recordings, correspondence and manuscripts relating to New Zealand music, its musicians, composers and organisations. Styles and genres include classical, popular, opera, ethnic, rock, jazz, band, country, and folk. All music in the collection is composed or performed by New Zealand musicians.

Predominantly New Zealand film, video and television dating from 1895 to the present. Collections include feature films, documentaries, short films, home movies, newsreels, television programs and film and television advertisements. There is also a significant documentation collection which includes publicity materials, stills, posters, production records, props, costumes and equipment housed in Wellington.

The collection encompasses items made during the earliest years of cinema, audio recording and television, alongside contemporary film, TV, advertisements, music videos, computer games, and radio productions. We also archive documentation and props with a connection to film, TV and radio making in New Zealand.

All genres and modes of production are represented, from home movies, oral histories and experimental works, to public broadcasts, educational recordings and commercially released productions.

ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Kuʻualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi aims to perpetuate and share the rich moving image heritage of Hawaiʻi through the preservation of film and videotape related to the history and culture of Native Hawaiians and the people of Hawaiʻi.

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